


Excelsior

by GibAndTonic



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-06 02:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16823323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GibAndTonic/pseuds/GibAndTonic
Summary: “Excelsior.” Gansey often said. Onward and upward. Inspiring words really, if not for the fact that Noah couldn’t figure out how to do either. His soul is decaying, his friends are anxious and he can’t admit to himself just what his unfinished business might be.





	1. Unfinished Business

“Maura says there’s a definite reason you can’t _move_ _on_ ,” Blue paused here, looking as if she were digesting the implication those words held and how odd they were to say to your best friend who also happened to be a cryptid, before pressing on. “Unfinished business and the like...and then Calla said that you know what it is.”

Noah was sitting cross legged on the floor of Monmouth’s invented living room, looking disinterested and picking bits of potato chip that Ronan had been hurling at him out of his fine blonde hair. Blue shot Ronan a scathing look as a signal to stop throwing potato chips at Noah in the middle of what would be a heart wrenching conversation, which Ronan heeded with a curled lip. Gansey leaned forward in his desk chair, looking incredibly desperate for just a moment before he schooled his face back into his Richard Campbell Gansey III mask. Adam and Ronan shared a quick look, Adam looking hopeful and Ronan unreadable, before all eyes were trained on Noah again. Noah observed all these happenings in silence before making an exasperated noise and allowing himself to fall backwards, avoiding Gansey’s miniature Henrietta on instinct. “It’s not a what. It’s a who.” And then Noah was gone, off to wherever he went when he wasn’t with them. He seemed to disappear in between one blink and the next, or maybe he had gone right in front of them and their brains had simply ignored the anamoly to spare them confusion. 

“Well,” Ronan said, clapping his hands once, “That went well.” Blue snatched her own handful of potato chips to shower Ronan with on her to the bathroom/kitchen.

The four of them spent the better part of the afternoon reviewing Gansey’s journals on Glendower, mapping the ley lines, talking in circles on subjects they’d resolved weeks ago. Each doing their part to distract the others from wondering where Noah had gone but it was mostly for naught. Blue traced a ley line on the map spread on the floor and glanced at Adam as she said “Do you think he’s gone to do it?”Adam was caught off guard, as he had been not so subtly watching Ronan, who was laying on the floor opposite of himself and Blue, throw a ball of paper into the air and catch it. Adam answered lamely “Gone to do what?”

“The thing that needs doing.” Blue answered just as lamely. Ronan stretched his leg to kick the can of cream of mushroom soup that had been acting as a paper weight on the corner of the large map, causing it to to furl up near Blue’s knees. “Fucking rude.” Blue huffed. Gansey flinched at his desk, probably wrestling himself not to reprimand her language but Ronan simply smirked and thanked her.

Adam left at some point to “do Cabeswater things” Ronan tagged along, announcing “I’ll drive so the shitbox doesn’t strand you out there.”, as he followed Adam down the stairs. It felt foreign to both Blue and Gansey to be left behind as the others went to Cabeswater but neither wanted to admit that they wanted to stay at Monmouth in case Noah showed up. Gansey sighed softly and plucked another mint leaf to chew. “Jane?” He asked his not-girlfriend who was not named Jane, “Have you ever seen Rocky? I’d like to watch it now.” Blue stifled a laugh at the absurdity of Gansey, in his highlighter yellow polo and leather Topsiders asking her timidly to watch a sports movie. They settled on the couch, Blue’s head eventually falling to Gansey’s shoulder. His hand rubbing soft patterns up and down her arm. Somewhere in the middle of the movie Blue turned to watch Gansey and admitted, somehow stubbornly in a very Blue Sargent way, that she was scared for Noah, for Gansey, for the collective group of them.

Gansey turned to her more fully then and they pressed their cheeks together in the way they did when they pretended they could kiss. Blue closed her eyes and imagined a world in which one of her best friends wasn’t already dead but somehow still dying. Gansey envisioned a world in which his not-girlfriend did not bear a curse that would kill her true love when they kissed. They stayed like that for sometime until Adam and Ronan filtered back in, slightly muddy, and they moved apart quickly. Gansey took a moment to amend his fantasy and made sure that in his ideal world Blue hadn’t dated Adam before she began not-dating Gansey so they didn’t have to drift out of each other’s orbits to spare Adam’s feelings.

Neither Adam or Ronan brought up Noah as Ronan settled on the edge of Gansey’s bed in the center of the room and Adam leaned against the billiards table far from Ronan and feigned interest in the movie. Gansey had the distinct impression that they had argued, Blue couldn’t stop stealing glances at the blush riding high on Adam’s cheeks. In the brief time she and Adam had clumsily dated she had never seen him flushed like this.

“How was Cabeswater?” Gansey asked, but he said it like he meant “ _How_ _are_ _you_ _two_?” Ronan shrugged and Adam only said “It was Cabeswater.” Which are not very helpful responses when one is really trying to ask whether his two best friends are currently speaking to one another or not. The tension bled out of them all soon enough as Ronan openly mocked the movie and Adam openly mocked Ronan.

Eventually, Noah did return, emerging from his pristine room as though no time had passed and nothing strange had occurred. No one broached their earlier subject. They ate take out they remembered not to offer to the boy who wasn’t quite a boy and as such couldn’t eat. Blue and Ronan sniped at each other while Adam and Gansey discussed the ley lines and Glendower, Noah interjecting sometimes helpfully and sometimes not into each conversation. Things between them all were as easy and natural as they had been the day before but worry bubbled quietly beneath the surface of it all.

The unbearable truth for the five of them was that Noah’s soul decayed further and further each day. He materialized and disappeared rather randomly. He re-enacted his death -no - murder at strange hours, which is really any hour when you’re participating in your own murder’s dramatization. He struggled to hold his shape, getting smudgier than normal or else looking frightening and making Blue cry tears they all pointedly ignored.

He did best at being the old Noah -the Noah from before the discovery of the red Mustang or the twice burying of his own bones - when he was with both Gwenllian and Blue, two mirrors to reflect energy from. But he found Gwenllian highly unpleasant and thus began avoiding 300 Fox Way, limiting his friend’s exposure to the Noah they had known. The Noah they had known was unfortunately only a glimmer of the Noah that had been, it seemed being murdered could really diminish a person’s carefree spirit.

And while the other four had never admitted it Noah could sense that they were anxious. Anxious enough that either Blue had asked Calla and Maura for insight or they had sought her out to give it unbidden. They wanted both for him to go and for him to stay in much the same way he wanted both to go and to stay. They ached for him to be more and to be less but all he could do was be. Noah had suspected for a while what he needed to do to cross over. He had made his peace with his family at his own funeral, after all. Blue apologizing to his mother on his behalf for long drank schnapps as he watched, standing shoulder to shoulder with Aglionby boys he probably would’ve never even known if not for his own brutal murder and even if they had met he would’ve been too much older than them for this bond to encompass them all. This sense of belonging was literally worth dying for. So in that moment he felt a weird sense of gratitude that he had died so that he could meet fearless Blue the mirror, and enigmatic Gansey the king, and proud Adam the Magician, and dreamer Ronan who threw him out of windows for fun.

He thought he might just _go_ then, watching Blue with his family as he huddled between the boys. Blue had told him once she was a little bit in love with all of them and he felt that. Being so near to all of them and finally feeling he had righted things with his family, it just seemed like the moment to _go_ and then the moment passed and he hadn’t _gone_ and so began his suspicion and subsequent denial of what else he may have to finish.

He tried to stay in the moment as they finished eating and cleaned up, watching his friends and making quips. Too soon Blue and Adam were bidding them goodnight before they slipped out into the chill, Adam to drive Blue home in the Hondayota shitbox before returning to his home in the apartment above St. Agnes. Gansey fidgeted by his mint plant before settling on Main Street of miniature Henrietta, a sure sign that his insomnia would be keeping him awake tonight. Ronan rose and stretched, sleek and long like a cat, before heading towards his bedroom. Waiting wordlessly at his door to see if Noah would follow or not. Noah followed.

Ronan ignored him in favor of putting on his dreamed headphones, shining black metal that connected to nothing and still played Ronan’s bizarre music choices. Ronan shimmied out of his jeans, modesty either forgotten or never truly there, and pulled on sweats. Noah retrieved Ronan’s cell phone from the discarded jeans and plugged it into a charger that was similarly abandoned across the room. Ronan cussed at him quietly, Noah didn’t need reminded of Ronan’s stalwart hatred of the phone but Ronan cussed anyway, in case he did.

Ronan laid back on his bed, pressing buttons and turning dials on a small black box that didn’t seem to have a function, another thing he’d pulled from a dream probably. Noah hovered near Chainsaw’s cage, wondering if Ronan had intentions of sleeping tonight. Ronan seemed to sense this and answered by slipping off his headphones and saying “Let her out if you want.” Noah smiled gratefully and opened the door, Chainsaw swooped out with a cry and circled the room twice with great graceful strokes of her wings before settling near Ronan on the bed. Noah followed her lead and perched on the edge of the mattress, Ronan sliding over and sitting up to make room for dream creature and ghost best friend alike.

“So, Ronan...” Noah paused, thinking that if he were alive he might have taken a deep breath or perhaps sighed, then continued “Have you heard of Czerny Skate?” Ronan didn’t respond and Noah fumbled for words, the resolve he’d suddenly built up threatening to crumble just as suddenly. “There’s commercials and a billboard on um, Asbury Court. We drive by it sometimes.” Ronan nodded his understanding but didn’t otherwise respond, stroking Chainsaw’s wings and flicking her beak, somehow affectionately in a very Ronan Lynch way, when she nipped at his fingers. Noah settled further on the bed in the silence, feeling light and more mercurial than before. He felt himself slipping away to being _other_ for the second time that day so he waved briefly at Ronan before disappearing from the room completely.

Ronan swore harshly at his empty room, feeling the weight of Noah’s aborted confession in the air before swiping his phone up aggressively and beginning a search on Czerny Skate to occupy him until the morning when a polished Gansey would implore him to spend the day at Aglionby. The question of if he would go to school each morning was mostly habit by now, both boys knowing he wouldn’t. Ronan sighed and clicked the first link that came up.


	2. Muscle Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short transition chapter 🤷🏻

Ronan watched a crease form between Gansey’s eyebrows as he read Noah’s memorial page on the Czerny Skate website. It featured a large and chaotic sepia toned photograph of their fair friend. Even in the picture he was somehow more Noah than they had ever seen, clutching a wild patterned long board above his head in one hand with his other hand clenched in a triumphant fist. He was standing in the foreground with his lips and teeth in open in a lopsided grin, eyes squeezed shut and hair mussed. Behind him were the sharp angles and lines of a skate park. Gansey finally tore his eyes from the picture to read the paragraph below that described Noah with words like “vibrant” and “carefree”. Ronan could think of no one less vibrant than the Noah he knew but the longer he thought about it the more he could see it, as if the shadows of the living Noah stretched out far beyond their Noah. Gansey wondered when the memorial page had appeared, Noah’s funeral earlier that year felt like lifetimes ago, he wondered if before there was perhaps a missing persons poster on this same website.

The website belonged to a small local company that produced custom skate gear bearing Noah’s name and owned by a woman named Abigail. Her picture was featured under a tab labeled ‘Meet the Crew’ in bold red letters. She looked young with the side of her head shaved, highlighting several gold hoops in her ear. “Ronan,” Gansey spoke after what seemed like hours, his voice was strained “Have you seen Noah this morning?” Ronan grunted in a way Gansey could interpret as a “No.” but half a second later Noah was there. Hanging anxiously over Gansey’s shoulder, eyes squinted in focus at the picture of Abigail still displayed on Gansey’s phone.

No one spoke for the length of several of Ronan’s unsteady heart beats before Gansey implored quietly “Noah?” Noah nodded, then drifted towards the couch to lay down and cover his face with his arms. “Come on, you little shit. Who is this lady?” Ronan demanded, jostling Noah’s bent knee. Noah answered by shattering Gansey’s heart, mumbling quietly “I kissed Blue once.” Ronan quirked a brow and stepped back, forgetting for a moment to be an asshole or make a smart remark.

Gansey’s voice barely reached a whisper when he replied, “Okay.” And then, just a few decibels louder, “Why?”

“Why do you think?” Noah snapped back, “It’s not like either of us have anyone else to kiss.” Noah looked absolutely petulant, crossing his arms and sticking his nose up. Gansey was on fire, he felt anger course through him like an electrical current threatening to destroy them all. Noah’s petulance gave way to obvious guilt as his face twisted and he rubbed at his dry eyes, Ronan was reminded of when they had found the red Mustang and Noah had retched and retched with no results. Now, Noah was furiously wiping his eyes although still no tears would come. The storm inside Gansey settled as he took in the sight of Noah.

It took Gansey another moment to realize he had curled his fist in the way Ronan had taught him once, thumb outside of his knuckles, and then he was bewildered with himself. Ronan stood impossibly still at Noah’s side, eyes trained on Gansey for his reaction. Gansey shook out his fist while feeling awkward and then settled his hands in his lap, fingers interlaced almost delicately, unsure of what to say.

Noah cursed quietly and then confessed, “When I was alive I kissed Abigail, um I mean, like a lot. We were gonna get married, y’know after Aglionby. Before the time I got murdered.”

“Right.” Gansey replied lamely. “I should get to class.” Ronan could clearly recognize Gansey turning tail and retreating but he couldn’t blame him, “Sorry you got murdered and can’t move on because you have unfinished business with your old girlfriend.” Is a lot to say before eight am class, after all.

Noah had reverted back to laying down with his arms over his head and Ronan supposed since he had no intentions of going to any class he wouldn’t technically be saying it before so Ronan tried it out. “Noah, listen you fucker.” Noah peeked from under his arm. “Sorry you got murdered and can’t move on because you have unfinished business with your old girlfriend.” Noah smiled blithely and then faded out of Ronan’s view. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!! Thanks for reading! It’s been a minute since I’ve read the series so my time line might be a little messed up. You’ll have to pretend any inaccuracies are canon in this universe. I hope you enjoy me screaming into the void about all my feelings from The Raven Cycle.


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